Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Costs Of "Diversity"

It seems these days all we ever hear about are the wonders and joys of diversity. Isn't diversity wonderful, such a treat all this diversity, diversity, diversity, diversity.

It gets a bit tiring. Which is not to say I'm against diversity per se, rather, that as a Conservative I recognize that even good things in the wrong proportions can morph into bad things. Cancer is a form of diversity after all.

Here's a shining example of the downsides of out of control diversity...

NYC’s language issues adds challenge to emergency planning

The city has made efforts to address the problem. Among other things, the guide for a coastal storm situation is in 11 languages, with more on the way. And 311, the city’s information number, can be used in 170 languages. […]

Census estimates put the number of New Yorkers who speak English less than very well at about 1.7 million, out of a city of more than 8 million. About 15 percent of city households are linguistically isolated, meaning no one over the age of 14 speaks English very well.

The majority of those people are covered by a handful of main languages, including Spanish, Russian and Chinese, but there are scores of other tongues spoken in the Big Apple.

170 languages? Is this your idea of positive diversity? Or is it possibly multicultural madness masquerading as diversity?

Healthy diversity, to me, means people adding bits and pieces of their culture to the mix, not forcing cities to spend millions of dollars meeting every need of those who are using this country as a "diverse flophouse."

This to me is the best argument I've seen for simply shutting down all immigration for five - ten years and allowing things to shake out a bit.